Welcome to the lab of Rohit Pappu in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Our lab is located in the Center for Computational Biology in the School of Medicine.
Research in our lab is focused on three topics:
Mechanisms of protein aggregation: This is relevant for understanding the onset and progression of neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
Intrinsically disordered proteins: The organization of regulatory networks hinges on the presence of hub proteins, which carry out their biological functions in direct contradiction of the classical structure-function paradigm. We are developing quantitative models and experimental probes to understand how protein disorder, i.e., a purported lack of well-defined 3-dimensional structure, is used to organize large-scale protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interaction networks.
Computational nanotechnology: We are developing a nanoinformatics resource that will be used by the National Cancer Institute for de novo redesign of nanotechnologies in cancer therapeutics and diagnostics.
We currently receive funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Cancer Institute (NIH-NCI), and the National Institute for Neuronal Disorders and Stroke (NIH-NINDS).
Our research efforts are pursued through a combination of theory, the development of novel algorithms, computer simulations, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, and collaborations within and beyond Washington University.
Last updated, April 30, 2008